There is a pressing world-wide need for housing. The present demand is for 250 million units. Traditional building methods will never address this need. A construction method is required that is efficient and economical, which produces housing that is acceptable and durable.
Much of this housing is required in remote areas, with extremes of climate, lack of skilled labour, and no infrastructure. Typically, this would be much of the Third World, and Indian communities in northern Canada. While these communities are cut-off by vast distances, television makes them aware of the standards of living in the rest of the world, a standard to which they aspire. Thus they will not be satisfied by an inferior product.
There is an attempt to address this market by manufactured housing. Some of the present offerings are technologically advanced but are extremely inflexible; they cannot be adapted to individual wishes. Some of these buildings also have a strange space-age appearance which is not culturally acceptable. At a lower level of technology more flexibility may be achieved, but at this level efficiency and economy are reduced, so there is little advantage over traditional construction methods.
Traditional construction methods for the provision of frame housing, whether utilizing wood or metal studs, usually involves delivery of raw building materials to the building site and subsequent building of open work frames for each wall. The open work frames are then, before or after erection, provided with cladding. Insulation is usually provided after erection either in recesses between studs and/or as foam panels applied flush onto the frame. Vapour barrier is also applied independently after erection of the frames. Electrical wiring runs to the exterior of the vapour barrier into which cuts must be made for socket access. In all the erection of a building from raw materials is a skilled job for a craftsman.
Various prefabricated buildings have been proposed. Where these are reasonably low cost they tend to be "fit-together" units such as half houses which tend to be large and require specialized transport. Often such units exceed the sizes allowed on the roads and special provisions for their transport must also be made.
The basic philosophy of this invention is to manufacture building components which are so technologically advanced they reduce to a minimum the tasks that are needed to assemble them on-site. Thus all electrical and plumbing work, all measuring and cutting, fitting and testing, are done and checked in the factory. Despite this, the system offers considerable flexibility of lay out. Components may be taken apart and reused to create new buildings of different size, form, and function.
The building has a higher insulation level (R-30) and is lighter than any other building of similar size, so the components are easy to transport. They may be assembled by an unskilled staff, with no left-over waste to dispose of.
According to the invention there is provided a building system for a building having at least one room therein, the system comprising: a plurality of prefabricated wall sections each of similar size to another to form exterior walls when aligned with a side edge of one section abutting a side edge of an adjacent section, the height of each section, when erected, generally corresponding to the height of said room, and each wall unit including a rigid peripheral metal frame and a wall panel coextensive with the frame and attached thereto; the rigid peripheral frame comprising a pair of metal frame members to each side edge of said panel member the frame members of each pair having a thermal break therebetween, the frame members, when the section is erected, being vertical, the pair of frame members of one of the wall sections being connectable to the pair of frame members of an adjacent wall section to form a composite load bearing member. Conveniently the height of each wall unit depends on ceiling height desired. Usually in Canada and the United States a standard ceiling is 8 feet. Allowing for some overlap of ceiling insulation this would entail a panel having a height of just over 8 feet, say 8 feet and three inches. If the ceiling insulation is very thick the height of the wall panel is correspondingly increased and when the room height is different, the panel height is adjusted. The panels may be four feet wide and cutout regions may be provided in at least one of the wall sections for insertion of a member of the group consisting of doors and windows.
The system may include at least one roof truss; and support means to support the roof truss between a pair of said composite load bearing members of an opposed pair of adjacent wall sections. The support means may comprise a U-shaped bracket having a web and two legs, the web being adapted to extend across the thickness of the wall unit in the region of one of the frame members and each leg of the bracket being attachable to both of the frame members forming the composite load bearing member; and each of the lugs being supportable on and attachable to the U-shaped bracket. The web of the U-shaped bracket may be provided with a pair of downwardly directed prongs to locate the bracket with respect to the frame members of one of the composite load bearing members.
The system may include at least one ceiling panel having a width similar to the width of the wall sections.
Each roof truss may be provided with a guide track along a bottom chord thereof to support edges of adjacent ceiling panels located therein. The track may be of a T-section, the vertical leg of the T lying to one side of the cross member of one of the trusses and the arms of the T projecting horizontally.
A platform may be included having a load-bearing perimeter to support the wall sections.
The system may include tracking to define a pattern for interior partitions, the tracking comprising track members being connected one to another to be hingeable between a closed position in which they lie closely together for transportation and an open position defining said pattern, the tracking being attachable to the floor platform in the open position. The tracking may include a removable spacer at predetermined doorway locations.
The system may also include interior partition units, lower edges of which are locatable in said tracking in its open position, the partition units comprising gypsum cement board panels sandwiched about a core panel of stiff foamed plastic or steel framing.
Each frame member of the wall sections may comprise a pair of elongate steel C-sections located side by side separated by a thermal break, the mouths of the C-sections opening in the same direction and accommodating parallel edge portions of a wall panel. The steel C-sections may be latched together by a snap-on elongate plastic latch also of C-section with projections to engage with the inturned flanges of the steel C-sections. Spacing ribs are provided on the plastic latch C to bias the steel C-section inturned flanges towards the inturned flanges of the plastic latch.
An elongate plastic extrusion spline member may fit into a space between the steel C-sections.